Huckleberries: Docs pass with flying colors

There wasn’t a doctor in the house, but there were two freshly minted ones on that flight from Seattle to New York when a female passenger passed out and quit breathing. Earlier this sum, Drs. Kyle and Lili Chambers were en route to the World Cup in South Africa when they heard the SOS from a flight attendant. Less than 24 hours before, the Doctors Chambers had graduated from UWashington medical school – Kyle as an ear, nose, & throat doc; Lili as a pediatrician. (Kyle, a 1999 Coeur d’Alene High grad, is the son of Dr. Dave and Bev Chambers of Nettleton Gulch.) So Kyle & Lili rang their buttons and were escorted to the patient who was turning blue. Complicating matters, the family of the stricken passenger couldn’t speak English. Which made it impossible to figure out if she had been ill, eaten anything, allergies, or heart problems. In spite of this, the Doctors Chambers helped the woman to breathe again and stabilized her. Ultimately, Kyle and Lili made their connecting flight in New York, enjoyed the World Cup, and are now working at residencies in Massachusetts.

King of summer

“The end of August means that the best month of summer is upon us,” commented John Austin on my blog recently, “It’s that magical time for locals when we get our lakes back, our roadways back and our sanity back. Now, of course, July and August are exceptional in North Idaho with their long, hot days and cool, if short, nights. But September is the king of summer for (wife) Deena and me, as we navigate the south end of the lake without much competition, and meander the St. Joe and Coeur d’Alene rivers, gorgeous in their changing-to-fall colors. We also have the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes to ourselves, mostly, to witness the moose, deer, elk and bears in our chance encounters. No, the visitors to our area can have the rest of summer as long as they leave September, in all its majesty, to the rest of us.” In other words, if you’re a tourist, it’s time to scram.

Huckleberries

After a close encounter with those new body scans, state Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, tweeted via Twitter that she decided “that the name of the airport’s new full body scanner ‘Rapiscan’ is Freudian given what it shows!” … Trish Gannon, the chief cook & bottle washer of the River Journal, writes on her Facebook wall: “Worst thing you can hear while your son is killing a monstrous wolf spider for you? ‘My god, how come you’re not dead yet?’ I’ll have nightmares that a truly ticked-off spider is determined to get in the house for revenge” … Two-thirds of my Hucks Online readers consider the football fields of Boise State (blue) and Eastern Washington (red) to be equally awful. I being among them. Of those who beheld beauty in the strange turfs, 19.6 percent preferred BSU Blue and 8.9 percent opted for the new EWU red … Gotta give Mike Bullard (Demo wannabe for House District 4A legislative seat) an A for effort. He’s knocked on 2,500 doors in five of his Coeur d’Alene district’s 16 precincts – all while using a bike for transportation.

Parting shot

Spokane County sheriff’s spokesman Dave Reagan shot himself in the foot last week when he lectured KREM reporter Marissa Bagg re: appropriate work techniques. Seems Reagan thought Bagg had trespassed and scared children at the Hayden home of Spokane County Deputy Brian Hirzel, who shot Pastor Wayne Scott Creach to death at a Spokane Valley nursery. So Reagan fired off a news release, harrumphing: “This is inappropriate, and if anyone in the media needed a textbook reason for temporarily withholding the names of officers involved in shootings, this would be it.” Only Marissa didn’t do anything wrong. All this, according to the Inlander blog, Bloglander. Marissa acted properly throughout the visit to the home of Hirzel, who wasn’t there because he was on vacation. All was documented on film. When confronted with evidence, Reagan issued a second press release to correct his mistake. But he never said sorry publicly as he should have.